No Man’s Sky Blasting Off On June 21st, Priced At £40

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When our Pip recently explored a corner of the procedurally-generated universe of No Man’s Sky [official site], almost dying of cold then getting in trouble with the space-National Trust, developers Hello Games had a fifty-metre thing in the middle of the room. Covered with a shimmering velvet curtain and guarded by a 32-piece marching band, the cloaked object hummed, buzzed, roared, and occasionally released bees. It was, of course, a monolith inscribed with the game’s release date. It remained covered, though some bees did escape. All of that definitely happened.

Today, the news is out: No Man’s Sky will launch on June 21st, and will cost £39.99.

Pre-orders are live but don’t pre-order, eh? Even if it will get you a mildly upgraded ship thrown in on top. But do read Pip’s preview! You can hear about, say, about meeting aliens:

“I head to a nearby alien building in hopes of finding some resources and fall into conversation with a scientist I find there. I use the term “conversation” loosely. He says something but I only understand a fraction of the words. The rest is written in the Korvax language which shows up as an alien alphabet on screen. As you play you will find ways to learn these languages – there are monoliths which help teach you, for example.”

[Disclosure: oh gosh, I used to be pally with a member of Hello Games but I was terrible at staying in touch and we haven’t seen each other in ages and I did sorta move to Scotland without saying anything so, er – look, I’m not good at being friends, how much more soul-baring do you want this to be? Pip can tell you I’m awful too, if you want.]

66 Comments

Ugh, the Steam exclusive future for Europe doesn’t look too good. Retail AAA games are no more than €45 on retail (I have a PC box of The Division coming for €43.99), and now we have an indie asking €60 with no option for other stores.

I’ve become much happier once I got off the day 1 train. I can read reviews and wait for price drops. I never get to feel the disappointment of paying full price for a game that’s broken at launch. Time is on my side.

Of course it helps to have a Heroes of the Storm as my main game and I’m not bored of that after thousands of games. I can fill the time between sales perfectly fine.

If you can pull your head out of your arse for a moment you’d see that labelling this as a simple ‘Indie’ title is ridiculous, you a galaxy that is literally bigger than our own to explore, you will never see everything it has to offer… Just stop it with the indie-games-should-cost-nothing horse manure.

Meanwhile you should stop with this “galaxy that is literally bigger than our own to explore” horse manure, cause it’s a procedurally generated – size of the galaxy in a games like this is literally meaningless. They could make it 1/10th of the size, or 10 times the size, and noone could tell a difference. There’s just X parameters, Y modifiers, Z constrains and N seeds that can combine to create a system. The end result is that pretty much always you end up with less creative and less fascinating stuff that exists both: in nature and not-RNGed games.

I would be complaining about 60€ if it was a Steam exclusive triple-A game as well, because the going rate for AAA PC games is 45€ on retail.

Digital is price hiked to hell in EU on both PC and consoles. But because idiots keep paying 60€ on Steam instead of 45€ on retail, devs and publishers are encouraged to charge big on these digital exclusive games too.

It hit me like a bolt of procedurally generated lightning in the night. I lept out of bed, startling both my no-longer-sleeping partner and our cat. Frightened, she turned to me.

‘What’s wrong, unitled?’

Face drained of blood, I turned to her. ‘If the rumours of the price are true,’ I replied, ‘will soopytwist pay £40 for the near limitless and gorgeous space exploration game, years in the making, No Man’s Sky?’

Honestly…I feel that No Man’s Sky is an indie game done horribly wrong.
I mean, the hype they have generated has made them have too high expectatives for their game, and I doubt that the game will have enough content and quality to keep up with other AAA games out there.
Maybe I will be wrong and it’ll be the game of the year or something, but there’s no way I’m going to throw at them 60€ for something we can’t be certain it will keep up for their/our expectations. Maybe the release/the steam summer sale will make me think about buying it, though.

I’m always wary of this kind of games, and even more if they start as a small project. The last one that made me regret buying it at full price was ofc Elite:Dangerous. I preordered it, and probably threw about twenty hours in it before I realised it was all the content over and over again. I had the whole galaxy to explore, but it was…empty. Lack of depth everywhere, the same random missions over and over, the same encounters, exponential progression…and then I foolishly preordered again the planet expansion for the sake of exploring, and it was the same damn thing.

I don’t want to make this mistake ever again, and the price makes me more wary about it. But, as I said, maybe I will be wrong. We never know.

I’m right there with you. Exploring is one of my favorite things to do in a game, but it must always have some sort of purpose. With nowhere to truly hang your hat, I am not sure that NMS would hold my attention for more than a handful of hours.

But hey, there are still a few months until release, so maybe they’ll shed more light on it all and reveal a hook for players with my taste.

The procedural generation systems work with a limited amount of material, and its abundance determines how long the game will remain interesting from the exploration perspective.

There comes a time when you recognize every piece of the jigsaw and the structure reveals itself to you. Once that happens, unless the actual gameplay systems are exceptional, it’s not long before the experience becomes stale.

You can say that about Minecraft and any other game where you have generated content. That doesn’t mean you see really new things or can find special situations (a world under quarantine because of a bacterial disease, for example? Probably not possible in No Man’s Sky).

There may be a lot of No Man’s Sky, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be a lot of the same. Which is basically my fear/expectation of it.

And also makes the whole exploration idea seem pointless and empty. While being able to roam freely is a good thing, it’s nice if you can do things with a sense of purpose whether you make them yourself or are given hooks by the game. But you need something to dig into.

You have a suit and a ship you can upgrade by gathering materials. You can also discover new species and new elements, and name everything including planets.

Of course set pieces will be re-used, but there are only so many different types of terrains, flora, and fauna you can create for a single game. Creating different configurations with all that stuff is what procedural is all about. So even you have seen certain things before, there will almost always be things you haven’t seen yet, too.

Of course set pieces will be re-used, but there are only so many different types of terrains, flora, and fauna you can create for a single game.

Having priced itself as probably the most expensive procedural generation-oriented game to date, there better be more than “only so many” ingredients. You can boast having as many quintillion planets/animals/plants as you want, but that’s ultimately a meaningless statistic if the generator systems aren’t fed a -very- varied and abundant diet, so to speak.

To me it feels £10 too much. If it was me selling, my price would be £30. Oh, and none of this -9.99 suffix rubbish either. I mean seriously, why are retailers still doing this in 2016? Yes, we get it. In the past (when people were generally more ignorant) the idea was that £29.99 “sounds better subconsciously” than a straight £30. At least I suppose in sales techniques and Propaganda taught by Edward Bernays. But now, when everyone is long aware of these tricks, wouldn’t it be less patronising and treating your customers with a bit more respect by actually not doing this childish sales technique anymore? Whenever I see it, all it tells me is the seller thinks we are idiots. Or is the reason it’s still done today rather more esoteric? As in, there has to be an upside-down 666 in the price to show to the banks and investors they are Satanists?

How does this indie filth fucking dare price itself with the aristocracy? I reserve my money for the true Triple A Big Time Serious Business games! The true stars of our industry, the content-packed, TV-advertised gems our beloved Ubisoft and EA give us! Now excuse me while I buy Star Wars Battlefront and the new Hitman.

Neither do I. I also don’t post ultimatums demanding that games reduce prices to match my expectations. I’ll be waiting for a sale just like soopytwist, but there’s really no need to raise such a fuss about it.

Isn’t £40 just the RRP? I mean almost all my games are Steam only, but I don’t buy them from Steam or pay Steam’s inflated prices (where most new games are £40). I don’t buy new games off the Humble Store or GOG either since again their new game prices are usually terrible.

Took me one minute to find this for £30 and I’m sure it’ll get cheaper as more digital stores start offering pre-orders.

Sorry, but I see neither the production value nor the developer’s track record to justify a €60 price tag when games like XCOM2 or The Witcher 3 cost less on launch day. And potentially endless procedural content alone is no decisive argument either, or else every endless runner would sell for €60 as well.

Let’s wait for the reviews. If they’re raving like Stardew Valley with a dev who does updates in a week like others in a year then I’m sold no matter +- 20$.
As Starbound turned out vapor this seems the only competing space exploration game but just cashing out 60$ to get a newb ship with the order seems hasty.

Of all the games to have a pre-order bonus that significantly changes the start conditions…

I understand the powerful economic incentives for developers/publishers to push for pre-orders, but including a ship with a hyperdrive seems to defeat the purpose of the first few hours of the game (as described by Sean Murray to Pip in the latest preview). Even if I decided to pull the trigger early, having a bonus that messes with the intended feel of the game’s start would put me off. If Murray wants this to be taken seriously as a survival game, I’m struggling to remember…did Miasmata start you with a cure or a complete map with landmarks if you pre-ordered? Just an odd decision.

Seeing it appear on GOG I was stunned for a moment, this is a BIG title that will at worst equal a high-end triple-a release, at best it will be the next Minecraft. For this to appear on GOG at launch is quite extraordinary, although I’m not sure how it fits in with their DRM-free policy.